5 ms·

The sad truth is (in the case of Reddit anyway) that allowing people to freely publish their opinions on your platform hurts your brand and your advertising rev

The sad truth is (in the case of Reddit anyway) that allowing people to freely publish their opinions on your platform hurts your brand and your advertising revenue. This is why /r/creepshots was taken down, despite being completely legal and within the Reddit rules. It damaged the brand. Same reason why the "hate speech" against Islam was taken off of /r/news.

Jerry2 10y ago
>The sad truth is (in the case of Reddit anyway) that allowing people to freely publish their opinions on your platform hurts your brand and your advertising revenue. They're a user generated site (UGC). Truth is that their brand was mostly in the hands of their users from day one. And it's extremely hard to wrestle that control out of the hands of your users without suffering some pushback. In come cases, this pushback can even kill a site by making community disenfranchised. Reddit has been doing a lot of censorship lately and people are slowly leaving that site. By exerting more free speech restrictions, they're starting to alienate large swaths of their userbase. Here's an example of Reddit censorship in action: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/13/redditors-checked-rnews-for-updates-on-the-orlando-shooting-instead-they-found-a-war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06... And then there's this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/17/trumps-meme-brigade-took-over-reddit-now-reddit-is-trying-to-stop-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06... And this is just creepy: ‘We know your dark secrets. We know everything.’ Boasts Reddit CEO Steve Huffman http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2016/05/30/reddit-knows-your-dark-secrets/ http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2016/05/30/reddit-knows-yo...
- rodgerd 10y ago
  > they're starting to alienate large swaths of their userbase. Alienating racists, woman-haters, and pedophiles! Heavens, what an awful thing to do!
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sergiotapia 10y ago
    I imagine he was referring to normal people who wanted news about the Orlando shooter but instead found thread after thread of [DELETED]. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Avoid gratuitous negativity.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      Although I detest that incident, I haven't seen any evidence that this went further up the chain than renegade moderator(s). This doesn't seem like the kind of thing Reddit's staff would get involved in so quickly and so heavy-handedly.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Have you seen the threads before the deletion? There was a huge brigade of "DEPORT ISLAM" and "Yes all muslims" comments – over 90% of the comments were that, and /r/the_donald ensured they would be constantly upvoted, too. If such a thread happened here, you can be sure @dang would nuke them, too.
      - ominous 10y ago
        If you have a significant % of the population screaming X, you don't have a problem. You have a population that believes in X. of course, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_majority and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) still apply. What I am saying is, terribly as it may seem, hate can also be belief.
        kuschku 10y ago
        Yes, but belief is not something that is supposed to be on that subreddit. The subreddit is for a balanced discussion about news. (And that belief is very similar to "The Third Wave" experiment – I recommend reading the books or movies to try to understand the right-populist movement in many countries today)
rtpg 10y ago
It's also that Reddit isn't a place without culture. If people don't want something on their platform, they're under no obligation to do so. Granted , Reddit is a bit wider in scope than Something Awful (for example) but it's still a community in itself that can make decisions on content.

Jerry2 10y ago

>The sad truth is (in the case of Reddit anyway) that allowing people to freely publish their opinions on your platform hurts your brand and your advertising revenue. They're a user generated site (UGC). Truth is that their brand was mostly in the hands of their users from day one. And it's extremely hard to wrestle that control out of the hands of your users without suffering some pushback. In come cases, this pushback can even kill a site by making community disenfranchised. Reddit has been doing a lot of censorship lately and people are slowly leaving that site. By exerting more free speech restrictions, they're starting to alienate large swaths of their userbase. Here's an example of Reddit censorship in action: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/13/redditors-checked-rnews-for-updates-on-the-orlando-shooting-instead-they-found-a-war/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06... And then there's this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/17/trumps-meme-brigade-took-over-reddit-now-reddit-is-trying-to-stop-them/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06... And this is just creepy: ‘We know your dark secrets. We know everything.’ Boasts Reddit CEO Steve Huffman http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2016/05/30/reddit-knows-your-dark-secrets/ http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2016/05/30/reddit-knows-yo...

rodgerd 10y ago
> they're starting to alienate large swaths of their userbase. Alienating racists, woman-haters, and pedophiles! Heavens, what an awful thing to do!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sergiotapia 10y ago
  I imagine he was referring to normal people who wanted news about the Orlando shooter but instead found thread after thread of [DELETED]. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Avoid gratuitous negativity.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    Although I detest that incident, I haven't seen any evidence that this went further up the chain than renegade moderator(s). This doesn't seem like the kind of thing Reddit's staff would get involved in so quickly and so heavy-handedly.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Have you seen the threads before the deletion? There was a huge brigade of "DEPORT ISLAM" and "Yes all muslims" comments – over 90% of the comments were that, and /r/the_donald ensured they would be constantly upvoted, too. If such a thread happened here, you can be sure @dang would nuke them, too.
    - ominous 10y ago
      If you have a significant % of the population screaming X, you don't have a problem. You have a population that believes in X. of course, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_majority and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) still apply. What I am saying is, terribly as it may seem, hate can also be belief.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Yes, but belief is not something that is supposed to be on that subreddit. The subreddit is for a balanced discussion about news. (And that belief is very similar to "The Third Wave" experiment – I recommend reading the books or movies to try to understand the right-populist movement in many countries today)

rtpg 10y ago

It's also that Reddit isn't a place without culture. If people don't want something on their platform, they're under no obligation to do so. Granted , Reddit is a bit wider in scope than Something Awful (for example) but it's still a community in itself that can make decisions on content.